Today is ‘Asylum Day’, at least on the BBC which is devoting a whole series of programmes to analysis and discussion of immigration.
From what I can gather, these programmes will include a discussion on the plight (or otherwise) or real-life immigration cases and members of the public will be invited to join in with their views (which, knowing the BBC, will be carefully edited).
I do not believe that the timing of these broadcasts is accidental. For several years now, the debate about immigration has been growing more intense and widespread, despite (but maybe because of) the entire issue being kept scrupulously off the mainstream political agenda. The last few years, in particular, have witnessed a cavalier and wholly dishonest wielding of the ‘R’ word whenever any public figure has tried to get the matter on the agenda.
Even this attempt by the BBC at public discussion is being frowned upon by the Home Office:
“Asylum raises many complex and emotive issues and we always welcome debate on them – it is important, however, that the debate is rational and measured,” she said.
“The BBC has often covered these issues in considered manner, but we have some serious concerns about some of the content of the BBC’s ‘asylum day’.”
I get the feeling that by claiming that ‘we always welcome debate’, Ms.Hughes is really saying that she doesn’t want any debate at all. Just what is she so frightened of? I hardly think the BBC are going to turn this media event into a platform for extreme nationalism. Does she think that any public airing of these issues is going to open the floodgates to an atavistic army of potential ‘ethnic cleansers’? If so, it betrays just how little confidence our public officials have in the public they preside over.
I take the view that slamming the lid on this issue does not help matters. It has resulted in the fomentation of surly resentment and widespread hostility without such things being countered by intelligent or rational argument. It is another example of why free speech is, in fact, so less harmful than paranoid attempts to prohibit so-called ‘hate speech’.
However, it is because the existance of this resentment is no longer deniable that, I suspect, the BBC feels it is time to grasp some sort of nettle and open up the debate but I equally suspect that they will generate more heat than light. There is an immigration problem in Britain but it is a problem caused by the fact that the regulation is based on the entirely wrong-headed premise that we should only permit ‘political refugees’ to settle here but keep ‘economic migrants’ out (hence ‘immigrants’ are now referred to as ‘asylum-seekers’). Critics of the current system claim that, despite alleged controls, economic migrants are still getting in and that we must ‘tighten up’ the system so that only ‘genuine’ political refugees are offered a home in Britain.
To my mind this is fluorescent absurdity. What we are really saying is that we must shut the door in the face of people like Charles Forte but extend a big, warm welcome to people like Abu Hamza. Surely this should work precisely the other way around?
Of course the idea of letting in only political refugees is intimately related to the welfarist principle which, in my view, is the root of the poison. It is almost an article of faith among the ‘chattering classes’ that native British opposition to immigrants is driven by ‘xenophobia’ and ‘racism’ and is, therefore, all bad. However I disagree with this. I think a lot (maybe most) of the animus towards immigrants is in fact motivated by a wholly justified resentment of foreigners benefitting from a welfare system to which they have never contributed.
The British are not, by nature, an insular or tribal people but they do possess a profound sense of fairness which is currently being sorely tested by an unfair arrangement; an arrangement which wrongly turns away bright, talented contributors and actively encourages dependent, tax-consuming burdens.
It is a high time that there was a more open public debate about immigration because the current system does not need ‘reform’ it needs to be turned on its head. I am not at all confident that the attempts by the BBC to manage this debate will go any way to achieving a desirable and workable outcome.
The BBC’s “Magical Mystery Tour” of the world continues unabated.
“If so, it betrays just how little confidence our public officials have in the public they preside over.”
“Preside over”? Not “represent”? LOL! Man, Europeans really do think differently than Americans. I’m really starting to notice it now that I’m aware of it.
I think Britain needs a new constitution. Your society is too diverse to trust the State not to abuse their power simply because “it just isn’t done,” anymore.
Of course, I’m just a stupid Yankee, what do I know? >:^P
The libertarian position on immigration is supposed to be free immigration, so why are you, as a proported libertarian looking to clamp down even more on international freedom of movement than the current very strict restrictions?
As you say the British are not by nature racist (though I would argue we are insular – almost by definition 😉 ) – but this is an issue that racists can and do successfully exploit. IMO that is the true threat of the current situation.
Della,
How on earth have you managed to extrapolate that view from what I have actually said?
Please re-read the post.
David, it is never a good idea to respond to people who have not read what you have written by urging them to read what you have written. It’s not wrong, it just isn’t very productive.
Canada has an immigration situation sometimes discussed in language like that you have used about Britain’s. In the United States the issues are somewhat different, as immigration is tied up with issues like terrorism, trade and illegal drugs, and not so much with immigrants taking advantage of the welfare system. Really, it would be more convenient politically if we could deal with immigration from different parts of the world separately, rather than trying to apply similar rules to Mexican immigrants (who come in great numbers but raise few terrorism concerns), Muslim immigrants (who come in smaller numbers but must, regrettably, face greater scrutiny for security reasons) and immigrants from other countries. The fact that we cannot do this is why the top pre-9/11 foreign policy priority of the Bush administration — improving relations with Mexico — has been on the shelf for almost two years now.
The solution to immigration seems clear to me – I was amazed no-one suggested it on any of the BBC programmes I watched tonight. Let anybody in but don’t give them any welfare benefits. This way no-one is out of pocket; there are no freeloaders; genuine refugees (and even economic migrants) can come and be productive members of society; and we don’t have to pay for the beaurocracy that so ineffectually tries to keep illegal immigrants out.
Perhaps when this policy has been shown to work so well it could be extended to the natives…
Emmigration is also a taboo subject. The UK government more or less conspires to hide data on the subject, but it continues at a high rate, and these are overwhelmingly young, educated and highly employable people. The economic loss to the country is very large.
David,
I read the article the first time, and I have reread the article. The whole article reflects on a percieved problem with certain immigrant communities in a rather negative fashion, the only policy recomendation you make is to let in Lord Forte (an white Italian) and throw out Abu Hamza (an Arab man who is a British citizen who is being thrown out of Britain for saying controversial things).
Britian has a great history of allowing controversial political figures (such as Marx, Engels, Lenin etc) to live here, but you would throw that history away just for the sake of right wing political correctness and false promises of security. Defending freedom doesn’t just mean defending the freedom of nice people to say nice things.
Of course economic migrants, such as people from Vietnam, Somalia and Albania should be freely allowed in too, but you don’t really say that, you only really talk about a European capitalist.
Della,
I chose Messrs.Forte and Hamza as contrasts based on their individual attributes. I am not the slightest concerned about the racial or national groupings from which they sprang. The collectivist sentiments you refer to are entirely in your mind, they are certainly not in mine.
The point of the post is to highlight the absurdity and injustice of a welfarist approach to immigration and I am glad that it was not ‘correct’ enough for you because it is precisely those kind of attitudes that need to be challenged.
I’m sorry, maybe somebody can explain to me why the British shouldn’t be insular and tribal. Is this wrong? Did I miss something? Are people so afraid of being called racist that they let immigration policy be dictated by that fear? If preserving your culture and heritage is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Are people so afraid of being called racist that they let immigration policy be dictated by that fear?
Yes.
I posted on this a while back, which links to this article: “Derision greets BBC plan to turn asylum into a game”:
The BBC is about to take the reality game show format to a new low – by asking the public to vote on whether individual asylum seekers should be thrown out of the country.
The planned programme, which has the working title of You, the Immigration Officer, is to be part of a BBC “asylum day” along similar lines to previous crime and NHS days of themed programmes.
The format of the programme, to be made by the BBC current affairs department, has provoked an angry reaction from some MPs and refugee groups. [etc. etc. etc.]
The stifling of debate over immigration by the British Left and its paramilitary wing at the BBC is so obviously conducive to future racial unrest in the UK that I keep coming back to the idea that this is intentional. Bloody hell! The Great Left Wing Conspiracy is even harder to follow than The Great Right Wing Conspiracy.
Swede writes:
“Did I miss something? Are people so afraid of being called racist that they let immigration policy be dictated by that fear? If preserving your culture and heritage is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”
I’m afraid you are. There is no ‘debate’ on this issue in the UK. The combined forces of the liberal elite have made open discussion of the subject more or less impossible. Any objections to the flood of immigrants still arriving in the UK, or the way in which some previous immigrants have had a damaging effect, are still muttered about in bars and clubs and private houses, but public discussion simply doesn’t occur.
So strong is the stranglehold that people hedge around the subject, doing elaborate semantic dances in an attempt to find out whether they are going to be screamed at as a ‘racist’ before they even dare raise the issue in private. It is a quite astonishing social taboo – the one remaining topic that people cannot discuss.
Meanwhile, the simplistic notion that people should be free to travel and settle where they like overlooks the inescapable fact that, were the gates thrown open, small countries like the UK and others in Northern Europe would be culturally obliterated inside 50 years.
That “You the Immigration Officer” thing was on TV last night. I was struck by how the stories presented to the viewers were the sort of tales which, if you then voted to deny them asylum, would mark you down as a heartless nun-beater, and yet whenever there was a perceived loafer or NHS tourist, the public -still- voted overwhelmingly (3 to 1 usually) to keep em out.
Incidentally my wife happens to be Slovak, and one of the asylum cases voted on in that program involved a Slovak asylum seeker, and she (my wife) was constantly saying throughout that the picture the BBC was painting of Slovakia (“Land of Persecution”) was utter bull*hit to try and paint the asylum seeker in question in a more pity inducing light.
But there is a recognised problem with persecution in certain parts of Slovakia.
Regardless the BBC story which had me fuming yesterday was of a Croatian Doctor whom the Home Office are trying to kick out even though she now speaks perfect English and is about to take her UK medical exams to qualify as a GP.
I would rather people who have skills that add to the economy are allowed to use them than we pay them to do nothing at my expense.
I am very struck by Swede’s and G.Cooper’s use of “culture” as a reason for closed boarders, it seems to me an essentially conservative ( note the small “c”) and paternalistic argument.
Cultures exist and persist because they are believed in and satisfy the needs of those who participate in them; if they did not they would die, and rightly so. Did the British obliterate Indian culture during the Raj? No .Was Confucism expunged from Hong Kong? Hardly.In both cases neither alien nor native cultures were legislated for or against, and as such survived, complimented, informed, and fertilized each other.
It seems to me that to insist that a culture needs the protection of our legislators is proof that it is already dead,and that no amount of boarder police will save it.
Conrad, well said! Anyone who’s seriously advancing these “must protect our fragile mother culture” ideas renounces all right to criticise any French protectionism etc. in my eyes; where’s the big difference between that type of attitude & the Academie Francaise’s? What’s more, at least the Academie keeps itself to one tangible domain; language.
Indeed.
People ought to remember that trying to protect the ‘purity’ of English culture is the easiest way to destroy its vitality. What pure English culture?
A_t writes:
“Conrad, well said! Anyone who’s seriously advancing these “must protect our fragile mother culture” ideas renounces all right to criticise any French protectionism etc”
A fine argument! Or at least, it might be if it addressed what I had said.
This sort of liberal claptrap can be disproved by a single visit to any of several of our Midlands towns, where in large areas, the prevailing culture is, beyond question, Pakistani, as opposed to English.
Now you may happen to believe that is a good thing. You may even wish to encourage it. But you cannot deny it has happened.
It isn’t hard to extrapolate from that a situation where immigration to the UK took place without let or hindrance
Again, you may welcome this (it wouldn’t greatly surprise me – I’ve met a fair few Guardianistas who say they would) but I, and I suspect many others, would not.
Meanwhile, just in passing to Conrad Burns: was your misspelling of ‘borders’ a Freudian slip?
People ought to remember that trying to protect the ‘purity’ of English culture is the easiest way to destroy its vitality.
No-one mentioned ‘purity’ until you did. My, what a loaded word.
Just because a culture isn’t ‘pure’ and homogeneous doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, isn’t perfectly recognizable and might not be worth having around someplace on the planet.
For the sake of convenience, I like having English culture in England.
“For the sake of convenience, I like having English culture in England.”
& my point is, i see no scenario that will result in the destruction of English culture; sure, some areas may end up feeling ‘foreign’, but that doesn’t mean the destruction of English culture; just that it isn’t the dominant culture *everywhere* in the land. I lived in an area of Gateshead which was predominantly Orthodox Jewish for a couple of years. The culture surrounding me was certainly not the first thing to spring to mind when you say “english culture”, & I felt like an outsider (not unpleasantly so, but I was certainly aware that I was not culturally like most people who lived around there). Would you argue this is a bad thing too? Or is it ok because they’ve been longer-established, or they all speak fluent English? How is this Jewish enclave significantly different from the Pakistani areas you speak of?
Also, the strength of the surrounding Geordie culture did not seem in the least bit ‘weakened’ by this presence. I saw no evidence of it being endangered. Again, if you want to talk Pakistani culture, I knew several lads of Pakistani origin who were recognisably semi-geordie culturally; fusions fusions.
I’m not arguing for dropping all immigration controls; given the world economic situation at the moment, that would clearly result in the country genuinely being overloaded with people, & before we knew it most of us would be undercut in our jobs & unemployed or on much lower wages than we’re used to. But I don’t buy the “preserve our culture” argument at all; sorry.
given the world economic situation at the moment, that would clearly result in the country genuinely being overloaded with people
So you acknowledge that there’s such a thing as too much immigration?
Good. Now we’re just haggling over where the line is.
🙂 true
…. tho’ i’d argue that we’re still debating *why* there needs to be a line too; i’m not falling in with the “england’s culture under attack” brigade, nono.